


Come Rain or Come Shine

by ifeelbetter



Series: Raining on Broadway [2]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Broadway, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-30 19:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: Nate Summers was supposed to be (a) a great playwright, (b) a stay-at-home dad, or (c) a soldier. Somehow, he's lost all three, but he's found something that makes up for it in a certain script doctor.(Nate's POV for the events ofYou Rained On My Parade)





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You Rained On My Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039740) by [ifeelbetter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter). 



> The title comes from one of my favorite Judy Garland live performances, "[Come Rain or Come Shine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVQm5heUrc)." 
> 
> As always, [swingsetindecember](http://swingsetindecember.tumblr.com/) is the patron saint of this fic, this series, and every headcanon we eventually churn out for this universe.

Nate’s parents had insisted that he come stay at their cottage on the school grounds for a week when he called to tell them it was over between him and Aliya. It was their catchall solution to Nate’s varying crises over the years: joined the army? Come stay for a week. Lost your arm? Come stay for a week. Lost your wife? Come stay for a week. He wasn’t convinced of the efficacy, but he was willing to be comforted by the fact that they cared. 

“You should try writing again, darling,” said Jean over breakfast. “You always feel better when you write.”

“I think _you_ feel better when you write, Mother,” he said. 

She shrugged. “I don’t feel better when I write, I just feel _more_ ,” she said. His mother was the type who could just say things like that, right in the middle of her scrambled eggs, and it both sounded like she’d been working on the phrasing all night _and_ completely natural. 

“You should listen to your mother,” said Scott. 

“I’m not a writer anymore,” said Nate. He technically _had_ written a couple of off-off-off-etc Broadway one-act plays and had ghost-written some Tony jokes for a friend in the past couple of years, but it wasn’t his career. He had been a stay-at-home dad for the past six years, he hadn’t really _needed_ a career. 

“All the more reason to try,” said Jean. “And eat some more eggs, you’re looking wan.”

So Nate started writing a play basically because his mother made him do it. Also, because his father threatened to reverse the usual trajectory and come stay with _him_ for a week and, putting aside the problem that Aliya had the apartment and Nate had sent all his own stuff to storage, Nate would have done anything to avoid that. He’d tackle any number of absurd emotional remedies, he’d do affirmations in the fucking mirror every morning, just to avoid his father’s well meaning but overbearing pity. 

Besides. Nothing would work. Nate knew he’d end up one of those men who never remarried. Aliya would, of course she would, but Nate would just be grizzled and solitary. He had a perfectly clear mental picture of how embarrassing it would be someday when Hope was grown and getting married and she’d have to keep apologizing for her mountain man father with his Santa Claus beard and lack of table manners. 

But he’d write a play. Sure. For his parents.

* * *

He told Hope the bare bones of what he’d thought up on their phone call that night. She hummed at some of the right points, was clearly tuning him out at others. She did suggest a couple very gruesome death scenes, though. And the time-travel element.

He wrote **time travel** on a post-it and stuck it to the edge of his laptop.

* * *

His parents insisted he stay while he worked on the play. They were sure that Xavier’s School for the Performing Arts had the right vibe for a creative temperament and, as anyone with half a brain could tell, they weren’t quiet confident of his ability to take care of himself on his own. Maybe they were right. He didn’t even have an apartment of his own to go home to, not when he’d thought it right and proper that the man vacate the formerly shared domicile for a divorce. It’s how things were done, surely.

(And, yes, Aliya had snorted and said, “I’m not arguing with you giving me the apartment” when he’d explained that. But it had been the right thing to do. He was sure of it.)

So he stayed and he avoided the students who roamed the grounds singing happy songs loudly and breaking into elaborate choreography they’d just learned and generally being the kind of people who had convinced Nate he must have been adopted. (He wasn’t, he’d checked.)

He wrote. 

Aliya had the papers sent via courier. He signed them. 

And he wrote.

* * *

“Just make sure it’s not a musical if you’re going to be dark,” advised his mother in passing.

Nate made it a musical and just leaned into the angst. 

“Ah, well, at least don’t make it a love story, then,” said his father later, leaning over his shoulder. 

Nate spent the next three days adding love songs. 

Those were easy to write. 

He missed Aliya. He missed Hope. He was surrounded by people and he felt utterly alone.

* * *

Hope wasn’t good at phone calls. She got distracted and she’d forget that he couldn’t see her, nodding or shaking her head without him knowing. He’d spent the last six years putting his girl to bed every single night. He hadn’t been away for more than a day or two at a time.

* * *

When he finished the book, both of his parents offered to give him notes. Nate was very familiar with their brand of notes and declined vehemently. He’d spent too long having all of his creative writing assignments get covered in red marks before he’d even had a chance to submit them to a teacher. As a teenager, he’d gotten in the habit of hiding his writing under a loose floorboard in his room. He’d never bothered to hide cigarettes or alcohol (it was, after all, his mother who bought him a pack of cigarettes when he’d announced he wanted to become a smoker at age eight and who’d lit a cigarette for him and who’d shown him how to inhale and who’d then said, “See? Not worth it at all, is it?” when he’d choked out his first/last puff). He’d never bothered to hide the fact that he was as likely to bring home a boy as a girl either. At Xavier’s, being bisexual didn’t even seem that unusual, let alone like any kind of problem. They’d debated the various LGBT labels that might fit his situation over dinner, after all. But his writing? That he hid.

So, no, he was not going to accept for notes from either of them. 

It didn’t really matter, anyway. They were both solidly convinced that he, as a Summers scion, could not produce anything other than Great Art. Scott called in a favor from a friend of a friend and Jean made a couple more phone calls and before Nate really knew what was happening, his show was set to be produced at a not-so-small off-Broadway theater. 

Jean left a post-it with Neena’s email address on his laptop, informing him that she was expecting the book by the end of the day. 

He sighed when he found the post-it and decided it was easier to give in on this one. He emailed the book and attached the sheet music for good measure.

* * *

He took the train into Manhattan to meet with Neena a couple of days later. She’d chosen a small bakery in the East Village and Nate hated how awkward he always felt when he was supposed to just _find_ someone he didn’t already know. Why couldn’t they meet in an office? Somewhere where he’d walk in and be able to clearly identify who he was supposed to walk up to? Instead, he had to stand in the doorway and try to both make and avoid eye contact with everyone solitary.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he spun around. 

“You’re Nate,” said….apparently Neena. “Hi.”

“Um,” said Nate. “You’re Neena?” Just to check. 

“Yeah, and I hope you don’t mind, but I had a friend do a quick revision on your book,” she said. She wasn’t even looking at him, she was flagging down the barista. 

“Oh, hey, Neena,” said the kid behind the counter, holding a mug. “Your lucky day, I just made a mocha with whole fat milk instead of skim. You want it?”

“Thanks, Tabitha,” said Neena and took it. “What are you having, Nate?”

“You did a revision of my book?” repeated Nate. 

“Oh, god, no,” said Neena. Then to Tabitha: “He’ll have a black coffee.” Then to Nate: “You look like a black coffee kind of guy.” Then to Tabitha: “Yeah, he’ll have a black coffee.” Then to Nate, just as he was relaxing again: “No, it was my friend who revised your script. He’s a script doctor, it’s what he does.”

“But--” Nate started to protest, “But it’s _my_ script.”

“Yeah, dude, totally,” said Neena and sipped her mocha. “Only now it’s kinda better?”

“What.”

“Just a couple of changes, really,” continued Neena. “Basically just to the….um….to the genre?”

“He changed the _whole genre_?” spluttered Nate. 

“For sure, yeah,” said Neena. “But it’s no biggie.”

“That’s definitely a biggie!” Nate glowered. Neena patted him on the arm. 

“Black coffee for…..Neena’s dude,” said Tabitha. 

“Thank you,” he told Tabitha because it never paid to be impolite to people who were in charge of things you were planning to ingest. 

“Look, just take a look at the new version,” said Neena, pulling a sheaf of papers held together tenuously by a straining paperclip, “and then you can, like, tell Wade if he’s crazy.” She considered momentarily. “Well, he’s definitely crazy, but I don’t think he’s crazy about _this_.”

There was a business card attached. It was bright red and had big white polka dots in which the words said: “Wade Wilson, Words For Hire” and “Script Doctor extraordinary.” Only the “extraordinary” was handwritten, like someone had added it after the fact. There was an address, but no email or phone number. It was honestly the strangest business card Nate had ever seen. And who actually claimed “script doctor” as their career title?

But Nate took the revised book and sat at the window table with it long after Neena was gone. The sky darkened as he read and thank god he always had post-it notes and a red pen in his satchel because he really, really needed both that day.

* * *

When Nate stepped out of the bakery three hours later, it had begun to pour. He didn’t particularly care, he was too focused on the task at hand. In fact, this was more of a target than writing the script in the first place had been. He felt awake and invigorated, something he hadn’t felt since the marriage with Aliya had started tanking, if he was being honest, years ago, taking all his energy with it as it disintegrated. And he’d sleepwalked through writing the damn script in the first place, but this? This he woke up for.

Nate was an inveterate New Yorker. New York’s on a grid, any real New Yorker can find any address by just following the appropriate grid. And he had no number, no email address to work with, just a literal physical street address. And a name. So. Only one thing to do, really, and no time like the present….even if it was raining cats and dogs.

* * *

As he walked the three miles between the bakery and the address, he rehearsed what he would say when he opened the door. He’d start with the overarching accusation: _You ruined my script!_ That would be a good opener, it would show this Wade Wilson character that Nate was serious, that he knew about real Art. How dare this cheap-ass business card try to tell him, a _Summers_ , grandson of the first actress to win an Academy Award for a talkie, what his script should be. How dare he.

That should probably come next. Nate had always rolled his eyes when his parents used the familiar “How dare--” phrasing, but he’d also thoroughly integrated it into himself before he’d realized what it actually meant. _How dare anyone_ was always the implication. When you’re a Summers, how dare _anyone_ at all. 

And, yes, Aliya would have laughed at him and even Hope knew better than to try this line of reasoning (Nate had carefully tried to never use it around her, tried to never imply it, even if his parents dropped it into most conversations). And, yes, even Nate would usually have rolled his eyes at the trail of _How dare he_ s. But Nate that moment---the one stalking through sheets of rain---was blinded by righteous indignation….and a tiny voice in the back of his mind who had laughed at all the new jokes in the script, who was maybe a little guilty that he’d named the wife character “Aliya” and then tragically killed her off. 

He kept the script and all his angry post-its as dry as he could by tucking the entire thing under his shirt, hunching around it as best he could. 

So when he got to the right apartment building and was let in by an angry teenager with a shaved head, he stalked to the right apartment number and banged on the door, ready with a rant. 

The man who opened it had burn-scars running across his entire face and well into his hairline, hair buzzed in a way that both hid the fact that entire swaths of hair would never grow again through the scar tissue but also somehow highlighted the marks. On someone else, the scars might have been disfiguring or distracting, but on this face….they suited him, like a tattoo did some faces. 

Nate was struck, but he didn’t allow this man’s singular beauty to stop him from accomplishing his purpose.

“You ruined my script!” he announced and waved the script.

* * *

He left confused, a little aroused, and wearing an absurd t-shirt thirty minutes later.

* * *

He took the train back to Westchester, soaked through all over again from the walk to Penn Station. He watched the city transition into trees and thought about Wade. When Nate had stripped off the wet shirt, he’d been expecting at least a glance at the prosthetic, maybe even staring. It hadn’t come. The prosthetic was as high tech as they come, full articulation in a couple of different grips, even if it did make a whirring sound as it shifted. But it wasn’t subtle. People stared.

Wade hadn’t even glanced at it, he’d just grinned at his stupid joke t-shirt. What did that even mean? What kind of person just ignores the elephant in the room to make a joke about something so completely stupid? 

Nate’s shoes were squelching as he fidgeted and shivered a little in his seat. The businessman next to him spared a glare from his newspaper and then went back to ignoring him. 

The t-shirt _was_ stupid. But Nate had a daughter. If Wade thought this was the first time Nate had dressed up in pink, he was sorely mistaken. Hope had gone through a princess phase, after all, and Xavier’s was really, really well-stocked for a girl who wanted to be a princess and have princess tea parties. Everyone Hope knew during that phase had spent at least a little time in pink. 

_Hah_ , thought Nate. _If you thought I was gonna be a douche about wearing pink, I won that round_. 

Wade had also been so visibly overjoyed at the prospect of notes. Who does that? Nobody _likes_ critique, right? Surely ever artist---and Nate had known more than his fair share passing through Xavier’s while he grew up there---hated the bit where someone sat in judgement over their art and sometimes found it wanting. Wasn’t that the same as someone looking right down into the core of your soul and saying, ‘no, this soul’s all wrong’?

And yet Wade had been thrilled. 

He tapped his fingers on the windowsill. The rain was following him, still sheeting down and pelting the windows of the train. It almost felt like it was magnetized to him specifically, like it was just going to keep raining on Nate until it got what it wanted. 

There was something about Wade. Something different and new. 

Nate’s phone beeped. There was a text from Neena. 

**So….?**

And that was the question, wasn’t it. What was he going to do now? He had every right to tell Neena to...fire Wade? Cancel him? Or something. He could put his foot down and then it would all go back to--

Or. He could draw it out. 

He tapped the phone against the metal edge of the armrest, only partially to annoy the businessman. 

**Wade’s taking another shot at it** , he typed finally. 

Neena sent an obscure series of emojis back. Nate had never figured out emojis. He assumed it meant she would wait on Wade. 

Maybe they’d both just….wait on Wade.

* * *

The first thing he did when he got back to his parents’ cottage was he went online and picked an apartment. He needed to be back in the City. Fuck the artistic aura of upstate, he needed to be surrounded by concrete again. He’d have movers get his stuff out of storage and move him in. He’d be back, he’d write, he’d make Hope her own room and he’d make it even _better_ than her other one.

“Leaving us?” asked his mother, appearing at his elbow. When the familiar hand landed on his back, she seemed surprised. “Darling, you’re soaked.”

“Yeah,” said Nate, not really listening. 

She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t be a bad caricature of a Bohemian, Nate,” she said. “We have showers and laundry machines.”

He swatted her hand away. “In a minute,” he said. 

He picked the first promising listing. He was a Summers, no landlord would refuse him. And better to move fast, to start hanging around Neena’s theater. He’d be there in case someone had more for him to do. In case someone needed him for something. It was just….better. 

He did shower, eventually, and he did toss his soggy clothes into a hamper, but the shirt? He held it up to look at it again. It was a Pepto Bismol shade of pink and the unicorn’s sunglasses were coated in cheap glitter that he had already shed all over the floor, that coated his fingers when he touched it. 

He hung the shirt up to dry in his closet and closed the door. He didn’t want anyone to---something. Maybe catch him? Maybe he was more afraid that some housecleaner was going to toss it in with the rest of the dirty laundry and then, clearly assuming it couldn’t possibly be Nate’s, give it to someone else. Some student. Someone who would ironically wear a unicorn shirt. 

It smelled of the rain and the City and still, faintly, like someone who definitely wasn’t Nate. And also of cat.

* * *

When he mentioned Wade to Hope on their nightly phone call, she promptly got the wrong end of the conversational stick.

“Ooh, have you cyberstalked him, Dad?” she asked. 

“I don’t stalk people,” said Nate, frowning. “ _You_ don’t stalk people, right? You’d tell me if you--”

“No, Dad, _god_ ,” interrupted Hope. “Not that kind of stalking. You’re so old.”

“Um. Then,” said Nate, floundering a little. “No?”

“Don’t worry, I’m on it,” said Hope. There was the sound of typing in the background. Nate had the distinct impression that he was one of those films about hackers from the 90s and Hope was about to say, ‘I’m in.’

“Oh, he’s _that_ guy,” said Hope. 

“He’s _what_ guy,” asked Nate, sitting up straighter. “I mean, he’s _which_ guy.” Proper grammar was important when he was talking to his kid. 

“The guy from that Spiderman musical who got all burned,” said Hope. “You know, and then they had to shut the whole show down?”

Nate did vaguely remember. It had been sometime around 2005, right? Over ten years ago. Nate didn’t remember anyone saying that the actor had been burned in the face, it seemed like the kind of detail you’d remember. He did remember people saying “disfiguring accident” a lot though, so maybe. 

“Dad, there’s, like, a _bunch_ of youtube videos from before then,” said Hope. “I guess he was good or whatever.”

Nate sighed and pulled open his laptop. Hope was right: the first dozen or so results were about the fire, but after that it was just performance after performance. 

“Aw, his marriage ended after his accident,” said Hope. Then she seemed to catch herself. “I mean---sorry, Dad. Is that OK to talk about?”

 _No_. “Sure, honey.”

Nate had found the same article she must have found. It had a couple of photos of Wade and his wife from happier times, a couple of the wife---Vanessa Carlysle---looking harassed and worried in paparazzi photos afterwards. Nothing of Wade after the accident. The Before photos were stunning, though. It was an Evita production and it was the dance towards the end and they were looking at each other with that intense kind of love that only young people manage. Maybe only young people manage it because a person could only manage that once in a lifetime. 

Maybe Nate had spent his already on Aliya. Maybe Wade had with this woman. 

“We can talk about anything you like,” said Nate. 

Hope changed the subject.

* * *

Aliya sent him a series of dates and an agenda for arbitration. She was right, of course. They didn’t want the drawn out nastiness of a fight. Better to get it over with. Better to do it fair. He replied with a curt, “Understood.”

Then he added his new address.

* * *

Nate watched all of the youtube videos of Wade singing in cabarets and at benefits. He watched a lot of them twice. There was one where Wade was dressed in a gold sequined dress with fringe that swayed perfectly as he moved. Wade didn’t wear it like a joke. He wore it like he owned it. The audience tittered a little at first when Wade promised that he was gonna get “a whole buncha boys,” but then they just got mesmerized as he sang and danced. Nate had liked _Chicago_ before, but he’d probably never hear “Roxie” again without thinking of the way Wade smirked over his shoulder at the end.

So Nate might have watched that one a bunch of times. So what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important things you should know:
> 
> 1\. Though I did not come from money, I did in fact come from a family of ~artistes, so at least six anecdotes from my real life made their way into this fic.  
> 2\. Tabitha the barista is Boom Boom/Boomer/Meltdown. Four for you if you caught that!  
> 3\. Wade really thought "extraordinary" and "extraordinaire" were the same when he scrawled it on his business cards and, yes, he did scrawl it on every single card.  
> 4\. Wade's cabaret/charity gala performances are inspired by Aaron Tveit and Jeremy Jordan. You will find there are many, many youtube videos for you if you choose to go down that rabbithole.  
> 5\. Sadly, there is actually no real world version of any Broadway man doing "Roxie" in gold sequins. I am just transposing Wade into [Renee Zellwegger's outfit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_HTUapDQo) from the film of _Chicago_. 
> 
> I think that covers everything from this chapter! Come find me [on tumblr](http://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com)!


	2. The Bridge

Neena handed Nate a folder of headshots the next time he saw her. She offered to talk him through, to brainstorm with him about casting. He didn’t have much to say on that front, though, and no amount of handholding was going to change that. People had just never been his speciality. He nodded and took the folder, though, and ducked out of the theater to sift through it somewhere no one would notice that he didn’t really know what he was looking at. 

There was a Starbucks next door to the theater and that was usually a pretty good bet for avoiding people Nate knew: they tended to eschew anything but the tiny, artisanal cafes. Nate would probably be safe from prying eyes there. And he didn’t mind the coffee, actually. He’d drink any coffee as long as it was black. 

He’d spread a few headshots out on the table and was trying to work up an opinion on any of them when he saw Wade walk by. Nate had the strangest urge to hide under the table. He’d _never_ done that, not even when he’d asked out the popular senior out when he’d been a freshman. He’d just marched up to her and asked. Why the sudden impulse to hide? 

Wade was wearing a hoodie with the hood drawn all the way up, shrouding his face, and a pair of sunglasses. Even his posture was hunched over like he was trying to hide just as much as Nate had wanted to a moment before. It wasn’t at all like the man who had baldly admitted his kinks to a complete stranger, the man who Nate had been thinking about on-and-off for the past couple of days. 

But having Wade’s face so hidden just accentuated that he was a very, very attractive man. He was slender in a way Nate had never been, but still strong. There wasn’t a spare ounce of fat on his entire body. And he was tall, too. Tall, thin, lean...and then he paused and looked up at the theater next door, giving Nate a view from behind. Wade leaned back, reaching up with both hands to keep the hoodie in place against a gust of wind. It made the back of the hoodie inch up just the tiniest bit and...was that a flash of red? Just above the jeans, which hung loose around Wade’s hips, there was just the barest bit of red lace against flesh. Nate found that his mouth had suddenly gone dry. 

Then Wade turned and made eye contact over the top of his sunglasses, sudden like a bolt of lightning. 

What were the chances that Wade would just turn and see him? Surely Nate was at the very least shadowed by being indoors? Did Wade just have some sort of homing beacon to tell him when someone was watching him and where the gaze was coming from? Should Nate wave? Should he pretend he hadn’t seen Wade? Had Wade noticed that Nate had been staring at his ass? And what should Nate do with all of these headshots? 

Wade started coming towards the Starbucks. 

Better to hide the headshots. If Wade asked him to have an opinion about the headshots, Nate would absolutely out himself as thoroughly not knowing anything about casting. He was a _Summers_ , he was supposed to know about this stuff. 

Dammit, Nate was wearing his _glasses_. Why had he not worn contacts today? The glasses made him look so old. And there was Wade, all bloom-of-youth and sveldt and very much still with the kind of legs he’d had when he’d done that youtube video of “Roxie,” and here was Nate with his antiquity showing. 

Wade didn’t come directly to Nate’s table, so maybe he wasn’t here for Nate. Maybe he was going to just wave as he walked away. Maybe he was here to see Neena, who was apparently a friend of his. 

Nate was so engrossed in trying not to look like he was keeping track of whether Wade was going to come up to him or not that he completely missed Wade turning up at his elbow. 

“I have brought you a unicorn frappuccino,” announced Wade, holding out a murky mixture of nuclear waste in a cup, “to exchange for my unicorn t-shirt.”

Nate looked up at Wade and then back at the cup of toxic waste. Wade couldn’t actually expect him to _drink_ that, right? And how was he supposed to have known to have brought the t-shirt when he hadn’t known this would be the day Wade would turn up again? Did Wade actually expect him to carry it back and forth from the theater everyday? 

Wade seemed to be waiting for Nate to say something. Did he want the shirt _right now_? Could Nate run back to his new apartment and get it? Would Wade wait here while he jogged down the---no, that was undignified. No running. And, actually, there was no reason for Nate to go _jogging_ down the city streets just because Wade hadn’t thought to call ahead. 

“I don’t have your shirt with me,” said Nate, plausibly landing on ‘annoyed’ as the appropriate response. “I didn’t know when--” shit, abort, he was supposed to be the suave guy who didn’t _care_ if he saw Wade again, in fact, he was supposed to be _mad_ at Wade about the revisions, jesus, Nate, get your shit together “ _if_ I would see you again.”

Much better. Maybe Wade wouldn’t notice how Nate had stumbled over the word. 

Wade just shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “Fine, keep my baby hostage. I know where you work.” 

Was that a threat? A promise? _Flirting_? Probably not flirting. People didn’t use t-shirts to flirt and they probably didn’t threaten stalking as foreplay. 

Though Hope had called it ‘cyberstalking’ the other night--

“That’s no reason to look gift horses in the mouth,” continued Wade, waggling the cup of sludge at Nate again. 

Aaaaand now Nate was looking at Wade’s mouth. Nope, retreat, not appropriate. It was just that Wade had smirked the way he had smirked in the “Roxie” performance and Nate was thinking about gold sequins and, in a bizarre confusion of reality and youtube, also a hint of red lace. 

“That’s not what that means,” said Nate, trying to get a grip on the conversation. Had he paused too long? Did Wade know Nate had been staring at his mouth?

Wade sat on the stool next to Nate and starting kicking his feet back and forth, sometimes brushing against Nate’s arm as he pivoted subtly with each kick. 

“I have notes on your notes,” said Wade, pulling out a battered, grease-stained sheaf of papers. It had three coffee mug prints on the first page and a couple of paw-prints walking across it. It also had some chewed post-it notes pepper throughout, mostly pink. “A new draft _and_ notes on your notes. When it rains it pours.”

It was an appallingly compelling lack of professionalism is what it was. And Nate hadn’t seen a cat when he’d been at Wade’s apartment, but clearly he had one. Nate touched one of the more chewed post-its and it was still a little damp. 

“That’s not what _that_ means either,” Nate pointed out, but he was distracted by the notes. The first couple did seem to be about the script, but it seemed to quickly devolve. There was a series of about eight post-its about _Golden Girls_ towards the middle and how Bea Arthur was both a “fox” and a “role model for the kids.”

While Nate was distracted, Wade had pulled the folder of headshots away from Nate and had started spreading them out again. It surprised him when he realized that Wade had gravitated first towards Peter Parker’s headshot, given what Nate knew about how their final show together had gone. As far as Nate had seen online, Wade hadn’t set foot on a stage since that pyrotechnic had gone off at the wrong time and Peter Parker had been across the stage from him when it had happened. 

“I assumed you’d be….” what was Nate trying to ask? _Should_ he be asking? God, was he being a real asshole right now? “...angry about it.” 

Because surely, _surely_ , Wade was angry about it. Nate had been furious at everyone across at least two continent when he’d lost his arm and it had taken him years, a marriage, and something more important to think about in the form of a baby girl before he’d finally managed to quell his rage. Even now, it sometimes crept up on him unawares, shocking him with how much of a brute he could be again and again. 

Wade’s eyes narrowed and Nate could feel himself being assessed for a moment before Wade’s face cleared and he just shrugged. 

“Show was great,” said Wade simply. “Pete was _super_ great.” 

Nate was caught between two currents of emotion: a kind of quiet awe at Wade’s sang-froid and a frisson of irrational jealousy that Wade would be singing the praises of a man who just _stood_ there while Wade burned. 

Wade shook himself and made the most blatant change in topic since Hope had grown out of shouting, “NEXT, DADDY” at age five. Nate allowed it, even though it struck closer to home for him. They moved onto Nate’s show and the changes Wade was insisting on. 

Wade was incisive underneath that veneer or devil-may-care, that much was clear, but there was no real venom in him. He laid out Nate’s choices for the play, dismissed Nate’s emo version as the cry for attention slash macho posturing it absolutely was, and then was visibly delighted to win the argument. So much so that he re-started another argument right on the heels of the last one, clearly just to see what Nate would say. 

And Nate played along….just to see what Wade would say.

* * *

Instead of nightly calls, Hope was spending every other night at Nate’s new apartment. They were still making plans about color scheme and furniture for her room, but, in the meantime, Hope was sleeping on the fold-out sofa in the living room. Each time, they’d make up the bed when she arrived and spend the rest of the night either watching films on her laptop or, when he was lucky, just talking. Hope liked to talk and Nate liked very much to listen to her voice.

She had some thoughts on the whole Wade situation. 

“So you’ve given him a lot of post-it notes,” said Hope, summarizing what had been (admittedly) a lot of waffling on Nate’s part. 

“Yes,” agreed Nate. 

“And then he gave you a shirt and some more post-its,” she continued. 

“Yes.”

“So he leveled up.” Hope rolled over to look at him. “Dad, you’ve got to get him something better than post-its.”

“I don’t know, Hope. It’s not really a ‘presents’ kind of relationship.”

“No, Dad, you _gotta_ ,” she insisted. “Do you have any good t-shirts you could give him?” Then she wrinkled her nose, thinking about the shirts he owned. “No, they’re all so boring.” 

“Hey,” said Nate without any heat whatsoever. All of his t-shirts were grey, beige, or white. Actually, that went for most of his wardrobe. 

“Let me think,” said Hope, rolling back to stare up at the ceiling. She considered for a moment. “Do you think he wants to go the Natural History Museum?”

“Maybe,” said Nate, doubtfully. Hope liked to name the dinosaurs and scare herself with the squid diorama. He couldn’t imagine that being particularly appealing for anyone without Hope there to make it fun. 

“Or maybe you should buy him dinner,” said Hope, continuing undeterred. “Like, his favorite kind of dinner.”

“I don’t know what his favorite kind of dinner is,” admitted Nate. “I’ve only met him twice.”

“Does it say it somewhere in the post-it notes he gave you?” asked Hope. “I bet he put it in a post-it note like a _secret_.”

Judging by the fact that Wade had ranted about two different golden oldies, Carol Channing, and a variety of other topics in the few post-it notes Nate had already read, Hope might not be wrong. Maybe there was a rant somewhere about food that he could use---

“If it’s not something he meant to tell me, is it cheating if I use it?” he mused aloud. 

Hope rolled her eyes. “He can’t tell you something he didn’t mean to tell you, Dad. That’s not how it works.”

“OK, so if I’m buying him dinner,” said Nate, deciding it was better to roll with Hope than try to parse the nuances of the ethics of interpersonal neuroses. “What else should I try?”

Hope sat up and climbed over Nate to get at his satchel, which he had left hanging off the edge of the sofa when Hope first arrived. She knew the sorts of things his satchel usually contained and she unerringly pulled out one of his moleskine notebooks. 

“We gotta make a list,” she announced and flipped to a blank page. “Get out his post-its, we have to do _research_.”

Nate did as instructed and retrieved the annotated new draft from where he’d left it in his bedroom. He and Hope pored over the post-its, trading some back and forth as they debated whether _this_ one meant Wade liked pancakes more or if _this_ one meant he preferred tacos. Hope kept a dutiful list going throughout: places Nate should take Wade, food Nate should bring Wade, gifts Nate should give Wade. 

Eventually, she fell asleep with the notebook still open under her cheek. Nate slid it out oh-so-gently and pressed a feather-light kiss to her forehead. 

She really was all the best parts of him and Aliya, none of the worst.

* * *

If Hope had had her way, Nate would have arrived at Wade’s door the next day with roses and, apparently, a _Golden Girls_ collectible plate that Hope had found on eBay. Nate, however, had reservations. He kept Hope’s list as….as a reference.

That, and the unicorn t-shirt had migrated from the closet of his parents’ cottage to being draped across the armchair in his bedroom that no one ever sat on because it was a useless armchair in a bedroom. 

That was ….a reference too.

* * *

He re-wrote the polka that Wade had inserted into Act II the next morning, scribbling it onto blank sheet music and tinkering with the synth-tuba on his keyboard. If he was adding a tuba, he’d have to add it to the rest of the score...or at least enough to justify hiring a _tuba_ for a musical. Maybe he could double up---have the actors play the instruments? If he sped up the exposition song in the first act, the tuba could add an echo of polka there as well. It would be more cohesive, make more sense.

He couldn’t believe he was spending this much goddamn time on a _polka_. But it was funny and it lightened up Act II, especially the angry teenage son’s character arc. It would allow the audience to engage with him more, make him seem less like a pit of anger and retribution. 

New songs, new post-its, and still no phone number or email address. Oh well. He’d have to just….drop by Wade’s apartment again. 

Hope’s list was sitting open on the still un-made sosa bed behind him.

He stood up and walked vaguely towards the notebook, thinking. Hope’s list was...hyperbolic, of course, but it didn’t mean she was _wrong_. These were things that Wade would---objectively speaking---find engaging. And it would be basic manners to….to cater to the tastes of a colleague. Even platonically. 

Hope had eventually decided that the post-its about the tacos outnumbered the pancakes one, so that probably meant Wade liked tacos the most. 

Nate had read a review just days before somewhere about a taco truck that some entrepreneurial chef had started that was positively gushing---he saw the newspaper folded over to that page sitting on the kitchen table. It had an address, a list of which tacos the reviewer specifically recommended. 

What the hell. He’d just….buy a bunch of tacos and bring them with him to Wade’s apartment. He _had_ to go to Wade’s house to give him the notes, after all. Bringing lunch was just being polite.

* * *

Wade made grabby hands for the tacos as soon as he opened the door.

“I smell tacos, give me tacos,” he demanded. 

Nate handed him the bag of tacos. Wade inhaled deeply from the bag, wafting the scent towards his own nose like a sommelier. 

“Mmmm, this is from the guy on 47th, right?” said Wade, looking back towards Nate. “You skipped the chorizo, I hope? He makes it too fatty.”

“I--yes,” said Nate. “I figured we could...could have lunch? And you could look at some more notes?”

“You have _more_ notes for me?” asked Wade, clearly surprised. Shit. Was that not what Nate was supposed to do? He’d never been given notes he wasn’t expected to negotiate before. Did script doctors usually not linger?

“You don’t have to--” he started to say, but Wade was already expertly divvying up the tacos from the bag and continuing. 

“I mean, sure, my banter brings all the boys to the yard, I guess,” said Wade, opening up a foiled-wrapped taco and practically inhaling it as he spoke. “And you brought _tacos_. There’s very little I wouldn’t do for tacos.”

“That’s….um, OK,” said Nate. Wade made positively _indecent_ sounds while he ate. And he took really, really enormous mouthfuls. 

Nate found he was staring, a little slack-jawed. 

And yet Wade kept more-or-less to the script, to Nate’s new polka-inspired number, to the structure of the narrative. Nate wasn’t sure if he was impressed by the professionalism or disappointed by it.

* * *

Hope looked thoughtful when he reported how the tacos had gone down.

“I guess you have to be more romantic,” she said serious. “You have to take him to the Russian Tea Room.”

Nate snorted, imagining Wade in the Russian Tea Room. “How do you know about the Russian Tea Room?” he asked. 

“It’s like that time Anna Kendrick went on a surprise date with Gloria Steinem,” said Hope. Nate recognized all the words in the sentence, but found that hadn’t helped in the slightest in getting at the import. 

“Ugh,” said Hope, the sound she always made when Nate was being ‘too old for words,’ a sound her mother _absolutely_ encouraged her to make. “Nevermind. It’s not important. But if _Anna Kendrick_ could get _Gloria Steinem_ to date her in the Russian Tea Room, even _you_ can’t mess it up.”

* * *

The next time Nate saw Wade, he got partially through the sentence “would you have dinner with me at the Russian Tea Room,” before Wade diverted into a tangent about the pretzel cart outside the Delacorte.

They took Wade’s re-writes of Nate’s re-writes with them to Central Park, bought pretzels, and watched the sun set as they argued over the meter of a song. 

It was infuriatingly date-ish without being a date. 

Nate was tempted to just bang his head against a tree once Wade left.

* * *

And then Wade brought his boyfriend to the theater. If that wasn’t a clear signal that Nate was supposed to back off, Nate didn’t know what was.

Of _course_ Wade was dating a young, gorgeous, enormous ballet dancer who doubled as a landlord. Of course he was. Nate should have seen this coming, actually. It was probably some kind of convoluted ableism that had made him assume _he_ had a shot with Wade. His subconscious had probably been making too much of Wade’s easy charm, of the way Wade never seemed to second guess himself, the way Wade had leaned into him in the park as the light dwindled. 

But Wade was clearly demonstrating that Nate had overstepped. 

Nate was awkward and stalled in a bigger way than just a single piece of writing. He was a soldier who wasn’t a soldier, a playwright who needed the crutch of a script doctor, and a dad who only kissed his kid goodnight every other night. And he must be a full decade older than Wade _at least_. 

This Russian guy was younger, bigger, more impressive, and clearly more personable than Nate. 

Nate could take a hint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things you might want to know:
> 
> 1\. The Natural History Museum is beloved by all children who grew up in the greater NYC area, myself included. It is part of this childhood tradition that you terrify yourself by approaching the [squid & whale](https://orgtheory.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/amnh_fg06.jpg) exhibit. It's in a hall where all the dioramas are brightly lit....but not that one. You have to actually walk up to it to see in and it's just amaaaazing. No photograph does it justice.   
> 2\. My brother swears by the taco truck on 47th.   
> 3\. Hope has slightly overestimated the reach of a [Kate Spade ad series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjPMMyjCUok) featuring Anna Kendrick. I mean....I like Hope's version better.   
> 4\. The [Delacorte](https://publictheater.org/en/programs--events/shakespeare-in-the-park/shows-and-events/?SiteTheme=Shakespeare) is where Shakespeare in the Park happens every summer. You can get free tickets if you sit on line earlier in the day, it's a great thing. But it's also a beautiful part of the park to just hang out in. But these two theater dorks _for sure_ hang out there because it's related to Shakespeare ~for the people. 
> 
> If you want to come hang out, I'm on [tumblr](http://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com).


	3. Denouement

Somehow, meeting Wade’s Russian boyfriend led to being invited with Hope to meet the boyfriend’s adopted (?) daughter and her girlfriend and, apparently, to eat stroganoff. Nate wasn’t clear on how point A led to point B in the chain of events, but he spent a couple hours rolling out pie dough while Hope played something that beeped loudly and made trilling music sounds on her phone. 

He had a couple of pints of sour cherries he’d bought at the Farmer’s Market and pitting all of them gave him a chance to linger over where he’d gone wrong. 

It was probably somewhere close to the beginning, maybe even when he had been stupid enough to think that he wasn’t getting invested too much too quickly. He’d been lying to himself when he’d pretended they _weren’t_ dates he and Hope had brainstormed. And he’d been stupid to think that someone like him, someone a little broken and old and used up, got to just start up a new romance like that. It would have been too easy. 

Feeling things about Wade had been too easy, right from the very start. Nate should have known better than the just accept “easy.” The key from this point on was in not acting on those feelings anymore. They would be friends, nothing more. Wade had a boyfriend and Nate would absolutely respect that. It wasn’t _Wade’s_ fault that Nate had gotten an attack of inconvenient feelings. 

“What kind of pie is it gonna be, Dad?” asked Hope, perching on a stool on the other side of the bar counter. 

“Sour cherry,” he answered, still lost in his own thoughts. 

“I thought it was too annoying to pit all the cherries for a cherry pie,” said Hope. 

“Sometimes you just gotta lean into the annoying thing,” said Nate. _Sometimes you make the harder pie because harder is always more trustworthy than easy_ , he didn’t say. 

“Show me how and I can help?” she offered. She reached out for the second pint of cherries. 

He did and she, both literally and figuratively, helped.

* * *

The dinner was a sort of slow torture. Nate had been expecting it to be unpleasantly awkward---and it was, with Wade’s boyfriend clearly not done warning Nate off---but there was nothing awkward about how Wade was with Hope. They seemed to click in a way Hope didn’t often click with others. She was a kid who liked to slowly come to a judgement about a new person and only then would she begin to open up. It usually took weeks for her to claim a new friend.

But with Wade? Wade drew her out immediately, made her laugh, answered every question without hesitation. It was like they’d known each other for years. It was like having family, but better. It was like a family he would choose, every time, rather than one he had been born into. It was like those first few years after Hope was born with Aliya, when Nate had finally felt like he belonged somewhere. 

Nate tried to keep reminding himself that this _wasn’t_ his, this was nothing more than a peak into what could have been and the big Russian at the head of the table served as a nice visual reminder that Nate shouldn’t let his mind wander too much. Not even when Wade called Hope, “short stuff,” and she thrilled under the nickname. Nate wouldn’t make it into a thing. He’d be fine, he’d be cool. He’d think about it _later_ , when he could erase Piotr from the mental landscape and just enjoy this for the fantasy it would be. Right now, he’d just….play it cool. 

But that wasn’t taking into account the _sounds_ Wade made when he ate the pie Nate that baked. They were positively orgasmic. Nate bit his lip a couple of times and had to drag his gaze away from Wade’s mouth. 

It didn’t matter. This whole dinner was just a demonstration of what Nate was on the outside of. He couldn’t claim it, he couldn’t have it.

* * *

Nate _knew_ he had failed to be absolutely platonic over dinner, so it wasn’t a surprise when Wade stopped letting him visit. It was fair. Wade probably wanted space, some distance from Nate and all of Nate’s expansive greediness.

Nate pressed the buzzer a second time, but then he looked up. Wade was standing just to the side of the window, only barely visible from Nate’s angle. Wade knew he was there, was specifically choosing to cut Nate off. 

It was fine. It was right. 

Nate nodded. 

He deserved it.

* * *

The first arbitration session happened to fall on the Tuesday right after Wade had so clearly let Nate down easy. Nate had spent a day grouching at everyone at the theater before Neena had sent him home with a lecture on professionalism that was absolutely well-deserved and he’d spent the night moping alone in his apartment. Aliya was going to be going away for a trip in a few days and she got to hoard Hope---not hoard, that was unfair. It wasn’t hoarding if she had just as much claim to spending time with Hope as he did. So Nate hadn’t even gotten to curl up with his girl on the sofa-bed to watch terrible romantic comedies with him.

(Hope hated the rom coms, actually, though she allowed him to pretend to outsiders that he only owned the large collection of them on DVD for her. They’d negotiated the terms of that deal years before: he had to spend at least part of their evenings playing whichever violent video game she was currently enamored with in exchange.)

Aliya and Nate hadn’t been in the same room alone---without Hope as a buffer---for a couple of months by that point. For the year or two before that, they’d been less and less capable of being around each other without clashing in brutally-polite quiet voices. They’d spent a lot of time in icy silence instead of actual shouting matches, but it hadn’t been any better just by virtue of being quieter. Or any less doomed. 

Nate could tell Aliya was geared up for a proper fight when they shared the elevator on the way up. She was wearing her slate-grey Jimmy Choos, the shoes she had bought as a good luck charm for court. But even if the shoes weren’t a dead giveaway, she was standing ramrod straight with her arms folded, staring straight ahead, tapping her fingers on her own elbow. She was fairly buzzing with restrained energy. 

But, somehow, Nate wasn’t up for a fight. 

It wasn’t even the fact that Wade didn’t want him---that was just the latest in a string of things that buffeted at Nate. It was being so stupidly invested in winning Wade, in impressing him, and then being shown the man Nate had always failed to be in the shape of Piotr: manly, strong, young, and a consummate artist. If he’d been a veteran too, it would have been the icing on the cake. _Here’s the man you should have been_ , so sayeth the universe. _See how we reward a man like this?_ And the universe clearly _did_ reward men like Piotr, ust as clearly as it spat on those like Nate. 

Their arbitrator was waiting for them in the room and, after a few politenesses, they got started. The first item on the agenda was deciding who should get the cottage Nate had inherited from his grandmother outside Anchorage. The cottage was within walking distance of the airstrip she’d used to fly her small planes. Scott and, later, Nate had loved going up with her when the family stayed with his grandparents during summer vacations. The cottage itself had been passed through a couple more generations besides, so many that there were initials carved into structural beams that had yet to be identified in the family tree. Rumor was that it had been built by some great-great-great grandfather with his own two hands, but Nate would have put money on Grandma Kate being the one who put the sweat and labor in. 

The arbitrator---a friend of a friend named Jennifer Walters who Aliya approved of simply because she had once laughed herself sick at some biting comments Jen had made about Nate’s tie at a cocktail party---read through the claims on both sides. 

“Mr. Summers claims the cottage by reason of family heritage and inheritance,” she read. “Mrs. Summers---”

“Ms. Dayspring,” Aliya corrected. “I’m going back to my maiden name.”

“Ms. Dayspring,” said Jen, marking a quick correction in her notes but otherwise not missing a beat, “claims the property under a claim of equitable distribution of property under the proviso that she withdraw a claim to--”

“She can have it,” said Nate, staring out the window. He’d been staring out the window since he sat down. It wasn’t raining again, thank god, but Nate almost wished it was. It would suit his mood better if it was. 

Jen raised an eyebrow. 

“Are you serious?” said Aliya. “You didn’t even let her finish what I was counter-offering.”

“It’s fine,” said Nate. “You liked it there.” Or, at least, Hope had. Aliya would probably refurbish the whole thing, make it sleek and modern. She’d probably sand the mystery initials away and then no one would ever have to wonder who started that particular Summers legacy. It would be a Dayspring legacy from then on anyway. 

“Not as much as _you_ liked it there,” said Aliya. She drummed her fingers against the conference table “Jesus, Nate, you can’t fold like a wet noodle at the first hurdle.”

“There were--” he said, finally dragging his gaze away from the window, “--at least three mixed metaphors there.”

“Yeah, well, I can mix my metaphors all day and all night if I want to and you can’t--” said Aliya, clearly irritated and spoiling for a fight. 

“If I could draw our attention back to the matter at hand,” said Jen, polite but just loud enough to cut off the almost-argument. 

Nate sighed. “Do you _want_ me to fight you on this, Aliya?” he asked. _He_ didn’t. He’d rather Aliya take it all, regardless of what “all” entailed. When he’d been the first one in his family history to enlist, he’d wanted to wipe the slate clean of being a Summers. He felt the same now….better to leave all this _stuff_ behind. As long as he had his fair share of Hope, he wouldn’t need anything else. No fighting required. And, surely, they had chosen arbitration to _avoid_ fighting. 

“ _Yes_ ,” said Aliya at the same time Jen said, “No, of course not.” 

The two women looked at each other. A quick exchange occurred entirely silently, mostly in the eyebrows of both. Nate had seen Aliya have this kind of silent conference with her colleagues before. He’d once been the partner who could understand it better than anyone else, who would know exactly what she meant when she met your eyes like she was meeting Jen’s. But now it was all foreign. 

“Perhaps Mr. Summers is not in a frame of mind to discuss this matter,” said Jen finally. 

“You’re so right, Jen,” said Aliya theatrically, clearly having gotten her way. “We should try again tomorrow.” 

“I’ll clear my schedule,” said Jen coolly. 

Jen closed the various folders she had opened on the table in front of her and thumped them professionally into perfect alignment before she returned them to the briefcase she had originally taken them from. 

“The room was booked for a full hour,” she said to Aliya, who nodded knowingly. 

Once Jen had shut the door, Aliya turned on Nate. 

“What the hell was that?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me this is the moment you decided you’re still in love with me after all because you _so_ aren’t and this isn’t a Hallmark movie.” 

“No,” said Nate and wiped a hand across his face. “Sorry, was I not supposed to give you what you wanted?” 

“You’re supposed to fight me on it, Nate, otherwise it’s not fair,” said Aliya, and moved to sit in the seat next to Nate instead of the one across from him. “What’s going on here? Is this about the guy?” 

“How do you know about Wade?” asked Nate, voice going quiet. 

“Hope talks to me too, you know,” said Aliya, not unkindly. “She was worried. I can see why now.” 

“It wasn’t--it wasn’t important,” said Nate and ran a hand through his hair. Then, more truthfully: “It wasn’t what I thought it was.” 

“Oh, Nate,” said Aliya and sighed. She came to a decision. “Alright, you’re coming with me.” 

She stood and held a hand out, beckoning impatiently when he hesitated. 

“I’m doing this out of the generosity of my spirit, Nate,” she said. “That means we’re running on very limited supplies. This offer is a one-time-only deal and it expires in five….four….three...” 

He took her hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. 

* * *

It turned out Aliya’s version of a solution was to go to a chic, chrome-based monstrosity of a bar and get very, very drunk. Hope was at a sleepover, she reasoned. And it was the most effective tool for the task at hand.

She pressed the first shot into his hands and waved him to drink up. 

“I’m not talking about feelings with you until you’re drunk enough to tell me the whole story,” she said. “You’d just tell me the parts you’re not embarrassed by if you told me now.” She downed hers and waved at him impatiently to follow suit. 

Nate sighed deeply. 

But he drank the shot. And the three that followed.

* * *

He did end up telling Aliya the entire sordid affair at around 3AM in the back of a cab en route to his apartment. He even changed into the unicorn t-shirt again to demonstrate some essential part of the story and then refused to take it back off. He fell asleep in it on the sofa with Aliya’s foot smushed into his cheek.

* * *

When he woke, Aliya was gone, but she’d left a post-it stuck to his forehead.

 **Get your shit together** , it said. 

That was fair. 

He groaned and got up. Time to be better.

* * *

“Dad, we have to talk,” said Hope solemnly. She pulled him down to sit next to her on the park bench and he tried very hard not to have a heart attack. His brain was already seesawing between the ridiculous (‘Can daughters break up with their dads? Probably no?’) and the terrifying (‘What if someone has _done something_ to Hope?’).

“I have to tell you something,” she continued. The panicked options kept scrolling across Nate’s mind, but he nodded solemnly. 

“Dad,” she said, with a dramatic pause, “I haven’t actually been taking tap classes on Wednesdays.” She let another dramatic pause go by. “I’ve been taking taekwondo. I’m a sixth Gup Green Belt.” 

Nate let out a huge sigh of relief and leaned back against the bench. 

“Oh my god, Hope, I thought you were going to tell me something _bad_ ,” he said. “Don’t _scare_ me like that.” Then he paused, mentally repeating what she’d said. “And that’s great, kid. A sixth--”

“A sixth Gup Green Belt.”

“--A sixth Gup Green Belt,” repeated Nate. “Congratulations.” He pulled her into his side for a half-hug and she stayed there, just like she had when she’d been half this size. 

“Thanks,” said Hope into his stomach. She played with a loose thread coming off the bottom of his t-shirt. “Sorry I didn’t tell you. Wade said you’d get it.”

That was a surprise. “ _Wade_ said--” 

“He said you were a cool guy, so you’d get it.”

And wasn’t _that_ a mindfuck. 

“That’s--that’s nice of him,” said Nate slowly. “And you don’t have to take tap classes just because you’re a Summers, you know that, right?”

She nodded. “Mom already told me that,” she said. “But I thought---I thought you liked that I liked tap. That you thought I liked tap. Because you did.”

“Baby girl, I just love _you_ ,” said Nate and tucked her in even closer. “We don’t ever have to like the same things, I’m gonna love you just the same.”

Hope nodded, still pressed against his stomach. 

“When’s your next….” and Nate scrambled for the terminology, realized he wasn’t going to find it, and chose an approximation instead “....show?”

“ _Dad_ ,” groaned Hope, flopping sideways on the bench. “It’s not a _show_.”

But she grinned at him sideways.

* * *

The match was absolutely terrifying. Aliya met him in the stands with a shrug, an unapologetic “it was Hope’s secret to tell,” and then didn’t complain (too much) when Nate had to spend the entirety of Hope’s match clutching at her arm and closing his eyes.

Hope groaned when he handed her roses afterward, but she also laughed. Aliya rolled her eyes, but she smiled too. 

They got celebratory ice cream down the street. Nate was doing better at picking himself back up from his recent heartache, he was pretty sure. But then Piotr walked down the street in a crop top and booty shorts and Nate felt his self confidence shrivel a little. 

To distract himself, he brought up the possibility of Aliya and Hope coming with him to the opening of the re-titled _Providence_. 

“Asking the ex to be your date? The ex you’re currently in the process of divorcing?” asked Aliya. “That’s kinda sad even for you.”

“Asking the _mother of my child_ to be my date,” he corrected. “And...my best friend.”

She looked surprised, but also secretly pleased. 

“Can I wear a tux?” asked Hope.

* * *

Once opening night really was happening, it turned out to be bigger, brighter, and louder than Nate could have predicted. Apparently Neena had leaked a behind-the-scenes video and it had gone viral or something. People were more interested in this play than they had been when he’d come home from war short an arm, technically a war hero.

And thank goodness he and Aliya had patched things up enough between them to be friends again. (Arbitration was continuing to be a fairly bloodless affair, much to Aliya’s disappointment.) It was nice to have her nearby, easily within reach, when people were shouting questions and flashes were going off. 

Hope lingered near them for the first five minutes, but then she scampered away towards….towards Wade. Of course she did. 

“Is that him?” asked Aliya quietly while they paused for photos (mostly of the green dress, Nate assumed). 

“Yeah,” said Nate simply. He watched as Hope approached Wade, both in elegant tuxedos. Wade knelt down to speak to Hope, the way adults very rarely remember to do. And he leaned towards her, like everything she had to say was important. It was how Nate felt about Hope, but it wasn’t something he was used to seeing mirrored in other people. 

“OK, so maybe he’s cute,” said Aliya. “Hope likes him.” They both knew Hope had good instincts. 

“Yeah,” agreed Nate. Hope clearly _did_ like him. _Nate_ liked him. 

“But I’m not seeing why he’s got your panties all in a twist,” she said. She smiled sharply, all teeth, at the wall of photographers. A couple took an involuntary step back. 

“You haven’t met him,” said Nate. “He’s _funny_ and so smart and he doesn’t even realize that he’s kind, it just comes naturally to him…” he trailed off. “And he’s cute.”

Aliya snorted. 

They had arrived at the people who actually wanted to ask questions, so they had to drop the topic until they got inside. Instead, they answered innuendos about their divorce being cancelled, overly earnest praise for the show none of them had seen yet, and blunt scouting for anecdotes about the infamous Summers family. It was draining and Nate was so, so bad at it. Aliya wasn’t much better, but she could at least throw her ferociously sharp smile around like cudgel when people got too close. 

Inside, they found Hope on a sugar high singing Wade’s praises. Wade had said _this_ and Wade knew all about _that_. Wade had clearly made up an elaborate history for the theater that Nate wasn’t sure whether Hope had bought or had just been entertained by. 

It didn’t really matter. It still made Nate’s heart ache.

* * *

After, Nate was expected at celebratory opening night parties in at least three different bars. Hope had fallen asleep pretty early in the second act and Aliya kissed Nate on the cheek goodbye.

“If Wade’s that great, at least be his friend,” she instructed quietly into his ear. 

He nodded. But when he closed the door of their limo and turned around, he just barely caught sight of Wade speed walking away. 

He couldn’t very well be Wade’s friend if Wade didn’t trust him to keep his feelings out of sight. And clearly Wade knew that the adrenaline, the buzz of success, the tuxedos, would all conspire to make Nate want to just….to just throw caution to the wind. To follow Wade down the street, forgetting all the parties he was supposed to slough through. To bring Wade to the Russian Tea Room and bribe them to stay open late, empty except for them. 

But he didn’t. Wade had a boyfriend and he was literally running away from Nate at that very moment. 

Maybe Nate should write a play about this, but _Once_ sort of already cornered the market on almost-but-not-quite having a love story. A play about this love story would just be pathetic. It would just be another notch on the tally of Nate’s score of not quite making the grade, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

He watched Wade disappear into the darkness and wished him well silently.

* * *

It was a surprise to get an email from Vanessa Carlysle a couple of weeks later. Nate had spent the time in between doing a lot of frantic research on taekwondo, learning to make his own kombucha, and depression-baking. The apartment was filled with pies and fermented tea.

Nate had never met Vanessa Carlysle, despite the fact that her big break had been taking over the part of the ingenue in one of his father’s plays back in the nineties. They’d just never crossed paths and she was one of the many, many stars who made their way without Xavier’s overt guidance. 

But the subject line said, **Wade’s play** and, well. That was worth clicking on. 

The body of the message was pretty brief.

**Dear dumbass** , it began. **Clearly your head is as far up your ass as Wade’s is up his**. 

Nate paused to ponder both the image and the syntax. It did parse, but the metaphor did leave an unpleasant aftertaste. 

**I am guessing your major malfunction is that you think Wade is either in love with or actually dating Piotr due to his incredibly stupid habit of singing love songs to Piotr’s butt.**

She was beginning to remind Nate of Aliya, actually.

**Believe me, I feel your pain. But don’t be fooled: Piotr is actually super straight; crop tops do not always indicate homosexuality. And Wade is just Like That, unfortunately.**

A surge of hope shot through Nate. 

**I’m sending you Wade’s current “project”---which is code, in case you couldn’t tell, for “being pathetic on paper”---to demonstrate that this dumbass is as into you as you clearly are into him. (Piotr says you drooled when he ate pie at Tuesday Stroganoff. If Wade has found someone who actually finds the way he eats attractive, it would be to the benefit of society at large to help you stick with him.)**

She signed the email “Ness.” And there was a document attached. Nate printed it without looking and felt like his pulse had quadrupled its meter. 

He stood next to his printer waiting for it to finish. It was short, clearly unfinished. He flipped through it once, just to get a sense of what it was. He kept getting snagged on just reprehensibly poor phrasing, completely unlike the writing Wade had done on Nate’s revisions. It was clunky and awkward and so, so dark. 

The protagonist was a burn victim and somehow that made him a monster to all of society, especially to a heroic, beautiful war hero with a princess for a daughter. A daughter named Hope. 

Nate’s heart, already pounding, sped up even more. 

There was speech after speech from every character announcing how awful the protagonist was, how ugly. It was the wildest mischaracterization of Wade refracted through a miasma of misunderstandings of the past few weeks. Nate recognized moments from their interactions---the first meeting in Wade’s apartment, the tacos, the unicorn frappuccino, Hope running to him at the opening---but they had been skewed, twisted out of shape. Instead of how Nate had lived them, as episode after episode of Wade being generous and witty and sharp, they were all re-told as if Nate had been barely tolerating Wade’s presence. As if Nate had been holding his nose through every glimpse of Wade’s face. 

There was no actual plot. Just self-excoriation. Nate flipped back to the beginning. He could see their whole silly history now from a new perspective and it looked….ridiculous. He began to laugh and laughed until tears started to form. 

This was going to _work_ , he suddenly realized. He was going to _make_ it work. 

He just needed one more grand gesture. Hopefully, Wade could wait just a little longer. Nate had some songs to write. He had a happy ending to write. 

He looked out the window. 

It had begun to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things:
> 
> 1\. Sour cherry pie is delish. Also it's super hard to find sour cherries in season so Nate would absolutely have bought multiple pints for no other reason then that someone was selling them at the Farmer's Market in Union Square.  
> 2\. If you're wondering, Nate's favorite rom com is The Proposal, just like Josh Brolin's is.  
> 3\. All of Nate's wives have baaaasically been non-characters in the comics (including, if I'm not mistaken, a woman named Hope who died who then inspired him to name the kid Hope?) and they've alllll been fridged, pretty much. So any character I give Aliya is mostly OC and the fact that I gave her one of Cable's many names as her maiden name is just me doing my bit to reverse fridge her.  
> 4\. Jennifer Walters is, of course, [She-Hulk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She-Hulk) from the comics. If you don't know her, you should. She's _wonderful_.  
>  5\. Look, I don't know any more about taekwondo than Nate does. I googled it. Please let me know if I used the wrong terms or anything and Ill fix it.  
> 6\. The title of Nate's revised musical is a reference to the island utopia he founded in the comics by landing his former space station, Graymalkin, in the ocean. He ran it pretty well and then blew it up. And there's pretty much a summary of all of Cable's backstory: had good idea, blew it up.


	4. Epilogue

Six months later, they were supposed to be getting read to head over to the staged reading of Wade’s show, _Deadpool_. Nate would have offered to use his family’s reputation to speed the process up, but the buzz around Wade’s show was working on its own. A youtube video of Wade singing the title song on his upright piano in his apartment with Bea Arthur meowing along had gone a long way to promoting it. Nate had fielded some calls from his father about Wade doing a Broadway run, but Nate had held him off. Nate knew from firsthand experience that it worked better when you do it yourself. 

So instead, Nate was watching Wade try on potential outfits for the event. No tuxes because this was not an opening, per se. Instead, Wade was trolling through the depths of a deceptively small closet. Every few minutes, Wade would emerge from the closet (with a new series of puns about _coming out of the closet_ ) in a new outfit and talk his way through what Nate’s opinion should be. Nate, who was lying on Wade’s bed dressed only in the extra-large sweatpants he had to roll up, was happy not to be expected to evaluate each outfit. If pressed, he would have had to admit that the in media res version was his favorite since between each outfit, Wade wandered around in the pair of pink lace panties that Nate had bought him for Valentine’s Day. 

“Red suit, right?” asked Wade, holding up the suit in question. It was an eye-searing shade of red. 

“They all look good,” said Nate diplomatically. 

“Ugh, you’re so unhelpful,” said Wade. “I need _real_ responses now, babe. On a scale of one to fifteen--”

“Why fifteen?” asked Nate. 

“Obviously because it’s more than ten, keep up,” said Wade and held up the other suit. It was a charcoal grey, very sedate. “Rate them. Come on.”

“I’m thinking what you’re wearing right now is a perfect twenty,” said Nate, leering. 

Wade looked down at himself, surprised like he always was when Nate blatantly objectified him. 

“Oh,” he said and then looked back up at Nate. “How are we doing for time?”

Nate flopped back on the bed so that he could see his phone where it was sitting on the nightstand. 

“We’ve got plenty,” said Nate. 

“Oh goody,” said Wade and hooked Nate by the ankle. Both suits were abandoned on the floor where they would soon eliminate themselves from contention for tonight’s event. “As long as we’re not late.”

They were predictably running late by the time they actually left the apartment. Ellie and her girlfriend were sitting on the stoop outside when they rushed past. 

“Hi, Wade!” called Yukio. “Wow, I love the suit!” Ellie looked up from her phone and gave a slight nod of approval. 

It was a pale blue one because, as Nate had predicted, both of the previous options were now in no state to be worn. This one looked almost, but not quite prom-ish. It skirted absurd, but clung to Wade in ways that helped stave off absurdity. 

“Hi, Yukio!” called Wade, even as Nate dragged him along. “Bye, Yukio! Thanks, Yukio!”

Wade was laughing as they rushed away. This was Wade’s night so they were eschewing limos or even taxis and taking the subway instead. Wade had insisted it was an “integral part of his process” and Nate had been happy to go along with whatever Wade wanted. 

A staged reading was less pressure than Nate’s opening had been, but Nate had a feeling there would still be press. They had, after all, made a pretty big splash when they’d been first photographed by paparazzi a month or so after they’d finally started dating. Theater people loved gossip and somehow Nate and Wade hit all the right gossip points to make their romance newsworthy. The headlines had all been puns about Beauty and the Beast (though which of them was supposed to be Belle and which the Beast was still unclear to Nate, certain as Wade had been that he knew the answer) until Nate had carefully told the entire silly story of their actual meeting to a friendly journalist slash blogger. It had become a twitter hashtag for a couple days, their names having combined to make way for the pun #WateForIt. 

New interest in Wade had brought to light how many shows he’d had a hand in and suddenly all of the headlines were about Nate riding _his_ coattails, which Nate infinitely preferred to the sad way Wade had been sure that every version of the “Beast” jokes had been directed at him, at the burns. And it had also meant that people were circulating those old youtube videos of Wade at cabarets and charity galas. 

When they got to the tiny red carpet, Nate was proved right in his prediction that there would be press. There were a half dozen or so reporters, a few photographers. Wade’s hand gripped his when the first flash went off, but Nate just squeezed it back. 

“Wade!” called one of the reporters. “When will you be back on stage, Wade?”

Wade, who had been nervously rubbing Nate’s thumb, looked bewildered. “Back _on_ stage?” he repeated, confused. 

Nate smirked. “I’ve been trying to convince him to do the ‘Roxie’ number again,” he told the reporter. “Wade, do you still have the gold sequinned--?”

Wade shrugged, only partially distracted, “I mean, who throws out a gold sequin dress, am I right?” He looked to the reporter for support, who nodded enthusiastically. 

“There are rumors that Peter Parker is wooing you for a duet at next year’s MISCAST, is there any truth to that?”

“I’d do anything for Petey, everyone knows that,” said Wade. “But no one wants me on that side of a stage anymore.” It damn near broke Nate’s heart every time Wade did that, every time he saw the world only at its very worst when it pertained to himself. 

“Twitter says otherwise,” Nate pointed out. Twitter _did_ say otherwise. Tumblr moreso. Tumblr was very clearly on Nate’s side re: Wade doing another performance in the gold sequins. And they’d probably have even more to say if they knew about all the silk and lace in Wade’s wardrobe. 

“Nate, what does your family have to say about your new romance?” the reporter asked, switching targets. 

Wade looked confused. “Nate’s family?” he asked.

Nate rolled his eyes and the reporter spluttered. “The Summers family, Wade. You know? Scott Summers and Jean Grey? Christopher Summers and the Starjammers back in the 30s? Katherine Summers, first female Academy Award winner for a talkie?”

Given that Aliya and Nate had both been called in for a parent-teacher conference because Hope had decked an 8th grade while shouting, “How dare you! I am a _Summers_!”, Nate had to wonder whether Wade had just been assuming both she and Nate had been talking about complexions instead of their family heritage every time they said a variation of that. 

Wade gaped. “You’re _serious_?”

“How many ‘Summers’ surnames did you think there were?”

“A _lot_ , I don’t just go around assuming--Wait, are you telling me you could help me fulfil my lifelong dream of having Jean Grey sign my boobs?” asked Wade. The reporter laughed, delighted and clearly assuming it was a joke, but Nate knew better: his mother was absolutely going to sign this boyfriend’s boobs at some point. 

“Well, it will be an awkward conversation for me to have with my _mother_ ,” he said wryly. “But for you? Anything.”

Wade dipped him into a big Hollywood kiss for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Come hit me up [on tumblr](http://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com) if you want to chat!

**Author's Note:**

> I think that covers everything from this chapter! Come find me [on tumblr](http://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com)!


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